Arab-Sasanian & Early Islamic

ObverseSasanian bust of Khosrow II type + Arabic bismillah in margin.

ReverseFire altar + Arabic governor's name.

Transitional issue — Sasanian iconography continued for 50 years after the conquest.

ObverseShahada in centre; mint and date in margin.

ReverseQur'an 112 (al-Ikhlas).

First purely epigraphic Islamic coin — a revolution in monetary art.

ObverseShahada, ruler's name, caliph's name.

ReverseQur'anic verse, mint and date.

Samanid silver dirhams flooded Viking-age trade; vast hoards found from Russia to Sweden.

ObverseShahada + sultan's titles.

ReverseCaliph's name in Kufic.

Ghaznavid Indian campaigns funded vast gold issues from Mahmud onward.

ObverseShahada and sultan's titles.

ReverseAbbasid caliph al-Muqtadi.

Issued across a vast empire from Anatolia to Transoxiana.

ObverseShahada in square frame (post-conversion to Islam).

ReverseGhazan's titles in Arabic.

Reformed coinage after Ghazan's conversion; bilingual issues.

ObverseShahada with caliph al-Ma'mun named.

ReverseTahirid governor's name and mint.

Tahir founded the first quasi-independent Iranian Islamic dynasty in Khorasan (821–873), nominally loyal to the Abbasid caliph.

ObverseShahada in Kufic.

ReverseCaliph's name with Ya'qub's titles in margin.

The 'Coppersmith' rose from a militia leader in Sistan to ruling Iran from Fars to Khorasan — founder of the Saffarid dynasty and a hero of Iranian self-rule against the Abbasids.

ObverseShahada with Abbasid caliph al-Ta'i named.

Reverse'Adud al-Dawla's titles, including 'Shahanshah' — a revival of the pre-Islamic Persian title.

The Buyids (934–1062) controlled the caliph in Baghdad while openly using Persian royal titulature on their coinage — a deliberate Iranian revival.

ObverseArabic legend with Mongol tamgha.

ReverseUighur-script titles of the Great Khan.

Bilingual Arabic-Uighur issue from the Mongol Ilkhanate of Iran, before Ghazan's conversion to Islam.

ObverseShahada in three lines; marginal legend with Qur'an 9:33 and AH date.

ReverseContinuation of Qur'anic legend, with caliph's name and title.

Struck at the height of the Abbasid Caliphate's prestige under the patron of the 'Thousand and One Nights' court. Abbasid gold dinars circulated as the dominant trade coin from al-Andalus to Sogdia, and the standard was rigorously maintained for over two centuries.

ObverseStylised Sasanian-style bust derived from Khosrow II; Pahlavi legend.

ReverseFire altar with attendants; Arabic governor's name in margin; Tabari (post-Yazdgerd) era date.

Long after the Arab conquest the Caspian province of Tabaristan retained semi-autonomous local dynasties (Dabuyids, then Abbasid governors) who continued striking Sasanian-style half-drachms with Pahlavi script — among the latest survivals of pre-Islamic Iranian coinage, well into the late 8th century.

ObverseShahada with Caliph al-Nasir named; sultan's titles in marginal legend.

ReverseRuler's full titulature in Arabic.

Mu'izz al-Din (also Muhammad of Ghor) extended Ghurid rule from Afghanistan into northern India, founding the Delhi Sultanate's precursor state. His coinage circulated from Herat to the Gangetic plain.

ObverseShahada with Khwarazmshah titles.

ReverseCaliph's name in Arabic; mint and date.

Muhammad II ruled one of the largest empires of the Islamic Middle Ages — from the Caspian to the Indus — but his execution of Mongol envoys provoked Genghis Khan's catastrophic invasion of 1219–1221, ending the Khwarazmian state and beginning the Mongol era in Iran.